How does a marketing seasonal end up identifying frogs at 8 a.m. on the Fourth of July? Well, I’m an unofficial part-time naturalist. Working at Cleveland Metroparks for two years has taught me so much about Cleveland and nature When I work in the marketing department, I have to immerse myself in information and open my vocabulary to words that I never knew before. Suddenly “all purpose trails”, “invasive species”, and “biodiversity” are words and phrases that I know intimately, because we have to be ab...

My relationship with Cleveland and its lakefront has had its ups and downs. A lot of my youth was spent in the honeymoon stage. I spent a lot of time at Edgewater Beach, digging tunnels to China in the sand, reenacting scenes from the Little Mermaid or hiding from 4 th of July fireworks ( I was terrified of the sound). By the time I was in elementary school, social studies taught me the history of the city and the infamous Cuyahoga River fire. This, coupled with others’ negativity toward the city,...

You probably have a great relationship with your local Cleveland Metroparks reservation. You run on the trails in the mornings, walk off big dinners there in the evenings and relax there on the weekends. There is no area of the reservation that you haven’t hiked, biked or driven through. You’ve even started recognizing the wildlife. But, how well do you know the other reservations of Cleveland Metroparks across the city? Or, even one of the smaller reservations that stand like an oasis surrounded by con...

Telling someone you work for Cleveland Metroparks almost always leads to more questions. In the time since I’ve started working here, people always want to know more about what it’s like to for work for the oldest park district in Ohio. It’s safe to say in year and half I’ve been working here, I’ve become a Cleveland Metroparks fangirl. If you are not familiar with the term fangirl, it’s usually applied to people heavily involved in nerd culture, like Trekkies and Star Wars fans. But instead of ge...